12 “We may have … a new social and economic order”: ER’s broadcast quoted in NYT, 29 Nov. 1932.
12 Prohibition: The national ban on the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors,” called the Volstead Act, was the 18th amendment to the Constitution ratified in 1919. A year after ER’s broadcast, the 21st Amendment to repeal the 18th passed on 5 Dec. 1933, by over 70 percent. Norman Vincent Peale and the WCTU condemned ER’s broadcasts; NYT, 10 Dec. 1932; 15 Jan. 1933.
12 ER’s last broadcast, in the pre-White House series: Quoted in NYT, 5 Mar. 1933.
13 ER’s initial traveling intentions: NYT, 25 Feb. 1933; Raymond Moley, quoted in Frank Freidel, Launching the New Deal (Little, Brown 1973), p. 291. At Grief: Hickok, Reluctant First Lady, pp. 91–92.
13–14 ER’s new wardrobe: NYT, 25 Feb. 1933; complimented, NYT, 5 Mar. 1933.
13–14 shopping spree and Morgenthau: ER to FDR, nd, Feb. 1933, Roosevelt Family Papers, Children, Box 16.
15 “ER was disappointed”: Morgenthau was at first appointed to the Farm Credit Administration. For Howe’s reaction, see Alfred B. Rollins, Roosevelt and Howe (Knopf, 1962), p. 392; see also Henry Morgenthau III, Mostly Morgenthaus: A Family History (Ticknor &. Fields, 1991), p. 267.
15 Old school chums rallied: Helen Cutting Wilmerding to ER, 14 June 1933; ER to HCW, 23 June; Joseph Lash, Eleanor and Franklin (W. W. Norton, 1971), p. 365; ER in Junior League journal, 1933.
16 Alice Roosevelt Longworth on FDR: Quoted in Bess Furman, Washington By-Line (Knopf, 1949), p. 203; cf. Carol Felsenthal, Alice Roosevelt Longworth (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1988).
16 FDR’s Fiftieth birthday: Ted Morgan, F.D.R.: A Biography (Simon & Schuster, 1985), p. 336.
16–17 Ida Saxton McKinley: Betty Boyd Caroli, First Ladies (Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 57, 109–12; Carl S. Anthony, First Ladies, 1789–1961 (William Morrow, 1990), p. 284.
17 Ellen Axson Wilson: see esp. Ellen Axson Wilson: First Lady/Artist, by Frank J. Aucella, Patricia A. Piorkowski Hobbs, with Frances Wright Saunders (Woodrow Wilson House National Trust); the Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut; and Frances Wright Saunders, Ellen Axson Wilson: First Lady Between Two Worlds (University of North Carolina Press, 1985); and Joy Gordon and Jeffrey Andersen, En Plein Air: The Art Colonies at East Hampton and Old Lyme, 1880–1930 (Florence Griswold and Guild Hall Museums, 1989).
18 Ellen Wilson on “exactions of life”: Anthony, p. 349. Ellen Wilson’s death in NYT, quoted in Caroli, p. 142.
18 ER was moved by the second Mrs. Wilson, especially Edith Wilson’s gracious manner when they visited the American Hospital: “She left a few flowers at each boy’s bed, and I was lost in admiration because she found something to say to each one.”
ER, Autobiography, p. 99; Jonathan Daniels, The End of Innocence (Lippincott, 1954), p. 280; Anthony, p. 359.
18 Mary Peck: See Daniels, p. 190; Anthony, pp. 359, 370. Bernard Baruch allegedly contributed $75,000 to prevent publication of the letters, and in 1915 Mrs. Peck evidently acknowledged a much smaller “loan.”
18 Calvin Coolidge: See ER, Autobiography, p, 102; at the sink, Anthony, pp. 401, 400, 453.
18–19 Lou Henry Hoover and Oscar DePriest: I am grateful to Alan Teller for his work on the Herbert Hoover and Lou Henry Hoover installations at the Hoover Library and Museum in Iowa. See also Joan Hoff-Wilson, Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive (Little, Brown, 1975); Anthony, pp. 440–446.
19 Edith Roosevelt and ER: See Anthony, pp. 305–6; adulterers shunned, pp. 299–300; tusks and grin, Sylvia Jukes Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt (Coward McCann Geoghagan, 1980), p. 126; beloved shackles, Caroli, p. 124.
20 In 1924 ER campaigned for Al Smith, in a car with a giant teapot, which implicitly connected her cousin Ted to the Republicans’ Teapot Dome naval oil land scandal; see Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. I: 1884–1933 (Viking, 1992) (hereafter, BWC, vol: 1); and Morris, p. 479.
20 ER to Aunt Edith, ibid, p. 483; 17 Nov. 1933, ER Derby Papers, Houghton Library.
20 “My poor cousin”: Carol Felsenthal, Alice Roosevelt Longworth (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1988), p. 171.
21 Nicholas Longworth died of pneumonia on 10 Apr. 1931 while visiting Laura Curtis, his “poker pal” and former lover in Aiken, South Carolina. Called when his condition became dire, Alice was present but refused to be by his side during his final hours. She relinquished that place to his current mistress, the beautiful Alice Dows. She hated her husband so thoroughly by the time of his death that she burned his papers and most precious possessions, including his Stradivarius violin. Felsenthal, pp. 166, 168.
21 Alice Roosevelt’s attacks: Teague, p. 161; Felsenthal, pp. 171–73.
21 ER on gossip: “Curiosity,” Saturday Evening Post, 24 Aug. 1935, p. 9.
22 breast-feeding: Babies, Apr. 1933.
22 ER’s most egregious advice regarding regularity and thumb-sucking is in the Apr. and May issues of Babies; 1950s quoted in Paul M. Dennis, “Between Watson and Spock: ER’s Advice on Child-Rearing from 1928 to 1952,” Journal of American Culture (Spring 1995), pp. 44–45.
22 In 1933, ER wrote: “I believe very strongly that it is better to allow children too much freedom than too little.” Mothers should not “nag their children about little things.” It’s Up to the Women, pp. 130–31. To protect the younger boys, ER to Isabella Greenway, nd, Greenway Papers, Tucson, Spring, 1932; ER to Greenway with gratitude, 6 Sept. 1932.
23 ER on TR and Elliott: Hunting Big Game in the ‘Eighties (Scribner’s Sons, 1933), p. 33.
24 “You can’t rent your grandfather”: ER, This I Remember (hereafter TIR), p. 81.
24 ER to Metropolitan Opera audience: NYT, 11 Dec. 1932. Simon Boccanegra, program 10 Dec. 1932, Saturday matinee, 2 pm, Maria Mueller as Maria Boccanegra; with thanks to John Pennino, assistant archivist, Metropolitan Opera Association, libretto translated by Lionel Salter, 1977, Deutsche Grammophon.
25 ER invited 72 relatives: NYT, 5 Mar. 1933.
25 Emma Bugbee: NY Herald-Tribune, 5 Mar. 1933.
26 Germany: NYT, 5 Mar. 1933.
27 O’Day, “The Inaugural Festivities,” Women’s Democratic News, Mar. 1933.
27 Cermak: Lorena Hickok, Eleanor Roosevelt: Reluctant First Lady (Dodd, Mead, 1980 [1962]), p. 82; on Cermak’s death, NY Herald-Tribune, 27 Feb. 1933; NYT, 6 Mar. 1933; Tribune, 7 Mar. 1933; Freidel, pp. 169–74.
28 On Walsh: NY Herald-Tribune, 3 Mar. 1933; ER pp. 69,78–79.
28 Pleas for ball: See esp. NY Herald-Tribune, 4 Mar. 1933.
28 On balls: See esp. Washington Evening Star, 2 Mar. 1933; also Tribune and NYT, 5 Mar. 1933.
29 ER’s party: Washington Star, 5 Mar. 1933.
29 ER on FDR: Autobiography, p. 159.
29 his mind: TIR, p. 117.
29 ER to FDR, Swedish diplomat, Apr. 1936, nd, Roosevelt Family, Children, Box 16.
29–30 Felix Frankfurter, memo of visit, 8 Mar. 1933, in Max Freedman, ed., Roosevelt and Frankfurter: Their Correspondence, 1928–1945 (Little, Brown, 1967), p. 113. Frankfurter declined even though FDR said it would be easier to appoint him to the Supreme Court from a Federal post; there was not only the question of Frankfurter’s politics and his support of Sacco and Vanzetti, but his “race.”
2: Public and Private Domains
32 Democratic and simple: Inaugural articles, especially Associated Press’s Lorena Hickok, NY Herald-Tribune, 5 Mar. 1933; Apr. unsigned AP articles on ER by Hick, Hickok Papers.
32 Bess Furman wrote: Furman, p. 151; Hickok, Reluctant First Lady, pp. 106–7.
32 Reorganized the household: ER to Hick, 8, 9, 19, 20 Mar. 1933.
32 My first act: ER, TIR, pp. 80–81; Lincoln’s bedroom, ibid.
33 Details of rooms: See White House histories, esp. Frank Freidel and William Pencak, eds., The White House (Northeastern University Press, 1994); Wendell Garrett, ed., Our Changing White House (Northeastern University Press, 1995); White House Historical Association Publications, Wash
ington, DC 20503.
35 Pool time: TIR, pp. 117–18.
35 George Fox: ER was particularly grateful to Lieutenant Commander George Fox, who was FDR’s physical therapist in residence, TIR, pp. 116, 118; on water polo, Hickok, p. 149; and Henry Goddard Leach, My Last 70 Years. (Bookman Associates, 1956), p. 213. I am grateful to Dorothy Warren for this reference.
35 Henrietta Nesbitt, White House Diary (Doubleddy, 1948), p. 131.
35 ER often impatient: TIR, pp. 80–81; Hickok, p. 113.
35–36 On Crim and J. B. West, in J. B. West, Upstairs at The White House (Warner, 1947), pp. 30–31, 51.
36 Emma Bugbee recalled: Bugbee in Reader’s Digest, Oct. 1963, p. 95; TIR, p. 4.
37 Once, only once: Hickok, Reluctant First Lady, p. 148.
37 Missy LeHand: TIR, p. 114; excluded, p. 108.
38 Tommy seemed gruff: Lillian Rogers Parks and Frances Leighton, The Roosevelts: A Family in Turmoil (Prentice Hall, 1981), pp. 67–69. Tommy, long separated from her husband, lived with her new companion, Henry Osthagan, who worked for the Treasury Department.
38 Edith Helm: TIR, p. 83.
39 Louise Hackmeister: TIR, p. 115; NYT, 3 Mar. 1933; Nesbitt, p. 39; Parks, p. 46.
39 Mary Eben: TIR, p. 115; Rogers, pp. 253–54.
39–40 For FDR’s staff, see esp. Charles Hurd, When the New Deal Was Young and Gay (Harper, 1965), pp. 85, 88–89.
40 Gus and Earl Miller: TIR, pp. 28, 70; Hurd, pp. 85–86.
40–41 ER’s press conferences: Hickok, pp. 108–9; Maurine Beasley, ed., The White House Press Conferences of Eleanor Roosevelt (Garland, 1983); cf. Furman.
41 On 8 Mar. Bess Furman interrupted ER’s contemplative walk home from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’s birthday tea with the good news that Hick would attend. ER to Hick, 8 Mar. 1933.
42–43 Nobody else: ER to Hick, 11 Mar. 1933; hilarious details, 10 Mar. 1933.
43 On Monday, 13 Mar., ER’s first visit to New York as First Lady was filled with private business. According to Hick’s report, she went to her physician and dentist, hosted fifteen Todhunterites for tea on 65th Street, addressed a Todhunter assembly, attended a student’s wedding; shopped for clothes, and “had a private appointment for dinner.”
44 The WTUL temporary shelters committee included ER’s daughter Anna, Fannie Hurst, Nancy Cook, Pauline Emmet, Mary Dreier, and Rose Schneiderman. WTUL meeting, and ER’s activities, NYT, 15, 16 Mar. 1933.
44 The Roosevelts’ 28th anniversary: Nesbitt, pp. 43–44; FDR marked the occasion with a note and a check to his wife: “Dearest Babs: After a fruitless week of thinking and lying awake to find whether you need or want undies, dresses, hats, shoes, sheets, towels, rouge, soup plates, candy, flowers, lamps, laxative pills, whisky, beer, etchings or caviar / I GIVE IT UP!
“And yet I know you lack some necessity of life—so go to it with my love and many happy returns of the day! F.D.R.” FDR’s Letters, III, p. 339. There is no record of ER’s gift to her husband.
44–45 Bonus Marchers: Roger Daniels, The Bonus March: An Episode of The Great Depression (Greenwood, 1971), esp. pp. 167–81; Joan Hoff-Wilson, Herbert Hoover, pp. 161–62; ER was stunned. TIR, p. 112.
46 An hour with the veterans: TIR, pp. 111–13; NYT, 16, 17 May 1933; Furman, p. 171;Beasley, p. 9.
46–47 Women’s Press Club frolic: NYT, 21 Mar. 33; Fsurman, pp. 160–61. Hick’s unpublished fifteen-page article on this visit, Hick’s papers.
48 Blue sky & sun: ER to Hick, 13 Apr. 1933.
48 On 12 Apr. ER to Hick; on Ramsay MacDonald and U.S. peace leaders in World War I, see Blanche Wiesen Cook, “Democracy in Wartime: Antimilitarism in England and the U.S., 1914–1918,” in Charles Chatfield, ed., Peace Movements in America (Schocken Books, 1973). See also Charles Chatfield, “Alternative Anti-War Strategies of the Thirties,” ibid.
49 Lillian Wald to Mary Rozet Smith, with FDR-MacDonald correspondence references, 12 Apr. 1933, JA Papers Project, 24–1074.
50 20 Apr., Traveler’s Aid and Amelia Earhart: NYT, 20, 21 Apr. 1933; Emma Bugbee, NY Herald-Tribune, 21 Apr. 1933.
50 ER rejoiced in the modern adventure: NYT, 10 Dec. 1932.
51 “Do you shake and think”: TIR, pp. 91–92.
3: ER’s Revenge
52 ER was actually fussy: Parks, p. 19.
52 fresh-cut flowers: TIR, p. 78.
52 Flowers pleased ER: During her second week in Washington, ER attended an amaryllis show. She considered it “a good color show,” but the amaryllis was “not a flower I would enjoy.” ER to Hick, 21 Mar. 1933.
52–53 Harold Ickes was discreet: The Secret Diary of Harold Ickes: The First Thousand Days, 1933–1936 (Simon and Schuster, 1954), pp. 248–49.
53 Ickes, 19 Dec. 1934, pp. 248–49.
53 subject of derision: Catherine Mackenzie, NYT, 9 Dec. 1934, “Simple Fare for the White House” sect. 6; NYT, 13 Apr. 1935; Ickes Diary, 19 Dec. 1934, pp. 248–49; FDR joked, Ickes Diary, pp. 250–51.
54 The home economics movement: See esp. Martha Van Rensselaer and Flora Rose to ER, beginning Nov. 1930, Home Economic Records, Cornell University, # 23/2/749; Flora Rose Interview, New York State College of Home Economics Records, c 1953.
54 balanced meals: Bugbee, NY Herald-Tribune, 21 Mar. 1933. See also “MRS R for Home Science,” NYT, 27 Mar. 1933; Time, 27 Nov. 1933.
55 even ER was mystified: Henrietta Nesbitt, White House Diary (Doubleday, 1948), pp. 14–15; peas, p. 192; Schrafft’s, p. 64; watery, p. 186; headlines, pp. 185–87. ER’s poem to FDR, 29 Jan. 1938/PSF, box 177.
55 ER had persuaded herself that FDR had no serious gourmet interests: Even Nesbitt knew better than that, and tried to consider some “fancy” dishes on occasion. See Nesbitt, pp. 66, 68–70, for ER’s list of FDR’s favorite foods.
55 ER on bacon and eggs: S. J. Woolf, “Mrs. R of the Strenuous Life,” NYT Magazine, 11 Oct. 1932.
56 Major bit: TIR, p. 118. Rosamond Pinchot, Gifford Pinchot’s niece who had worked at ER’s campaign headquarters and was a young reporter and actress, visited ER on 28 Apr. 1933, and observed Major’s attack on Richard Bennett, Canada’s prime minister: As ER walked down the stairs to say goodbye, Major “flew at him making angry sounds. Then he bit the Premier in the thigh. Bennett was rather taken aback but said, ‘It’s all right, he didn’t draw blood.’ I made the tactless remark, ‘An ideal dog for the White House.’” Pinchot’s diaries, 28 Apr. 1933, Nancy Pinchot Pitman collection; see also Bess Furman’s account, pp. 165, 188.
57 Upset by those who burned cigarette holes in the tablecloths: Nesbitt, p. 276.
57 ER’s guests made demands: Nesbitt, p. 195.
57 Katherine Buckley to Farley, 30 Jan. 1933; Farley to Katherine Buckley, 15 Feb. 1933; ER to Miss Buckley, 17 Feb. 1933, box 1256/100.
58 Worker’s rights to the White House: Nesbitt, p. 211.
58 SDR: Nesbitt, pp. 212–13.
58 Lillian Rogers Parks on Mrs. Nesbitt: 30–31; p. 266 (n); pp. 69–70.
59 Bess Truman, J. B. West (with Mary Lynn Kotz), Upstairs at the White House: My Life with the First Ladies (Warner, 1974), p. 78.
4: Mobilizing the Women’s Network
60 FDR’s first hundred days of legislation and executive orders resulted in the Banking Act; the Economy Act which cut veterans benefits and government salaries; the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA); the Glass-Steagall Act, which created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC); the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA)—the centerpiece of the first New Deal, which launched both the National Recovery Administration (NRA) and the Public Works Administration (PWA), and also contained a provision (Article 7A) to promote independent unionism; the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA); the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC); the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA); and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).
60 Frederic Howe’s memoir, Confessions of a Reformer, detailed his work with antiwar activists and radicals.
62 During the 1920s, ER’s feminist articles: S
ee esp., “Women Must Learn to Play the Game as Men Do,” Redbook, 1928; see BWC, vol. I, pp. 365–71; reprinted in Allida Black, What I Hope to Leave Behind: The Essential Essays of Eleanor Roosevelt (Carlson, 1995).
62 Florence Kelley was an independent socialist who translated Friedrich Engels and was active in many causes. One of the original 1909 organizers of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), like ER, her radicalism emerged out of the conditions of her own childhood. Kathryn Kish Sklar, ed., Notes on 60 Years: The Autobiography of Florence Kelley (Charles Kerr, 1986), pp. 30–31; see also Sklar, Florence Kelley and the Nation’s Work: The Rise of Women’s Political Culture, 1830–1900 (Yale University Press, 1995).
62 the mother of us all: Frances Perkins decided on a career in social reform after Kelley addressed her graduating class at Mount Holyoke in 1902. Susan Ware, Beyond Suffrage: Women in the New Deal (Harvard University Press, 1981), pp. 35–37.
62 ER on Sheppard-Towner: Congressional Record, 6 Jan. 1927, p. 1154; see also Sklar’s introduction to Florence Kelley Autobiography, pp. 30–31, 112. A revision of the Sheppard Towner law, defunded in 1927, was included in the Social Security Act of 1935. But WIC was so limited most African-Americans were denied care. Subsequently extended, it became an accepted part of American life until it was again attacked and defunded during the 1990s. Cf. Mimi Abramovitz, Linda Gordon, and Alice Kessler-Harris.
63 ER was attacked: Woman Patriot, 1, 15 Feb., 1928. I am grateful to Christie Balka for this reference.
63–64 ER-Robert Bingham exchange on child labor: ER to Bingham, 8 Jan. 1934, 100/ Box 1286; ER to Frances Perkins, 3 Feb. 1934, Perkins Papers, Columbia; Bingham to ER, 14 Jan. 1934; ER to Bingham, 27 Jan. 1934, FDRL.
64 child labor amendment an entering wedge: ER in NYT, 20 May 1934; May 1934 column in Woman’s Home Companion.
64–65 Kelley and white labels: See Kathryn Kish Sklar, in Linda Kerber, et al., eds., US History as Women’s History (University of North Carolina Press, 1995).
65 ER and Nancy Astor at 30th anniversary NCL: Lady Astor championed working women and social reform, including minimum wages and fair labor practices. A longtime friend of the NCL, she was later associated with anti-communism and fascist “appeasement.” Kelley and ER quoted in NYT, 14 Dec. 1932; Accredited “newsgirls”: Margaret Chase Smith to BWC, in Skowhegan, Maine, June 1992.
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